[TYPO3-core] (New) TYPO3 CMS Vision

[Xavier Perseguers]

Hi,

Just would like to discuss a particular point coming up regularly.

>> * Make TER not the only distribution channel for extensions: allow
>> Composer support as well as GitHub hooks or even an official GitHub
>> application that lets you attach a listener which creates new TER
>> release records based on new git tags. This is both for developers and
>> users: developers will have an easier life and users will have more
>> frequent updates which match 100% with what you would find on GitHub as
>> downloadable tag-zips.
> 
> This might loose a whole bunch of TYPO3-'users'.
> why? in my view we have more people who use TYPO3 than pure editors and
> developers. there are a lot of integrators which do a lot more than
> editors but are miles away from being able to program (especially in
> bigger concepts than old procedural programming) or handle developer tools.
> these integrators are happy to have a TER where they find all extensions
> to resolve their problems. all in a nice(?) gui like EM.

[...]

That's a very important point. TYPO3 CMS tends to focus too much (and
more and more often) on the developer. New programming paradigm, code
cleanup, composer, ... I'm a developer, I won't say I'm not happy with
them, of course! But in fact we largely forget about what users want
(and by users I mean both editors and large part of the integrators out
there).

Having a centralized repository for TYPO3 extensions is what makes it
appealing for most users. We may miss feature X or Y, handling from CLI,
... but all in all the TER allows virtually anyone to easily contribute
to the TYPO3 ecosystem without worrying about Git, tagging, pull
requests, review workflow with mandatory score before merging and the
rest. (As a side note I agree that contributing was a lot easier in 4.5
as upload was possible from EM and getting it back "one way or another"
- through an extension - would be terrific for many.)

As a developer, I understand why some of us would love having
auto-publishing upon Git tagging, or being able to recursively install
dependencies from composer, wahoo, that's so sexy naturally. But what is
the benefit for the end user (again, normal TYPO3 integrator)? Be
honest: none or next to none!

I see drawbacks however. Having more than one known source will imply
not knowing where to look for something, will lead to new lengthy
development to glue everything together again after some time, will add
debugging sessions because suddenly something broke, ... and if e.g.,
composer would certainly ease continuous deployment or similar, let's
remember that most users (and many agencies as well) are working with
shared hosting with unsecured FTP access and it may be far from perfect
but... it works fine!

Please, please, please! We should not forget our motto:

	"Inspire people to share."

Inspiring people to share, for me personally means in regards to the
"TER" topic:

- I'm using existing infrastructure to publish my work because this is
how it should be done, I benefit a lot from it over time and it's fair
to play together, even if as a developer I'd be excited with other
techniques

- I'm using a public repository so that people with some knowledge may
"easily" contribute and send me fixes one way or another

- I try to keep cool with everyone and take on my time when someone
creates a ticket but is unable to provide a patch, or send me a patch
not the way I would like to have it (e.g., by mail, or by attaching a
diff instead of pushing it to Gerrit or creating a pull request on GitHub)

- I try to avoid ping pong with tickets by fixing nitpicking myself

- I take time to create a "good" documentation, to show everyone that
quality is not related to the infrastructure behind but to the will of
the author to do it right

The interesting part about being a developer is that we are able to ease
of work with scripts, ... so publishing to TER while tagging may be done
by creating some well-crafted hook and sharing it. It may be used by
whoever wants to do that but I see no reason to invest time and effort
to force everyone to do it like that. Again, this is against our motto.

My wish for the future of TYPO3 CMS is that we stop focusing on making
us, developers, happier, but step back, use our own product for real
projects of some scope and listen to our users.

Hooks vs Signal/Slot, ... be honest, who really cares? In the end having
a way to influence another extension is what matters, and we are
thankful to the developer who thought accessibility. The rest is just
nitpicking again. And if someone with next to zero knowledge of "proper
programming" is able to extend an extension or the Core to its need, we
won, that's exactly what TYPO3 CMS is all about!

And last point. We, as developers, have the bad habit of being largely
pedant with another's code. "Why did you use this technology, why did
you do it this way, why, why why". And it's the same with TYPO3 CMS. Of
course some parts are "old", "not the way you would have written it in
2014", ... but in the end it works! Rework it if it brings something but
not for the sake of doing it "the correct way". So, again, instead of
criticizing, let's be more humble and acknowledge that what matters is
keeping up the spirit and working together to achieve some better level
for our users, not matter what we prefer because contributing and
inspiring people to share is about being a respectful community that
aims at delivering a better user experience for day-to-day users.

Thanks for reading and... keep up the TYPO3 spirit

Kind regards

Xavier

-- 
Xavier Perseguers
TYPO3 CMS Team Member

TYPO3 .... inspiring people to share!
Get involved: http://typo3.org